ushernet Chapter 520: Traces of Time
Chapter 520: Traces of Time
Time continued to pass, and pressure continued to mount on our settlement.On a personal note, at least, things had gotten better over time. The first big upgrade I had gained was that I reached the point where I could build my eleventh rune. This was, at least in theory, a major upgrade to my capabilities, and one that I could even take with me to the Market after my death, thanks to the {Brand of Miria} that Felix had given me. It also came with a free chunk of Achievement.
Power: Form Your eleventh Rune out of Absorption Essence
Achievement +1650
1,650 Achievement was less than I had been hoping for, but it was far from bad. I was still quite happy with the boost to my overall pool of Achievement, and especially the fact that I could take this rune back with me.
Of course, while this was, in theory, a notable upgrade… that was mostly in theory. The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth runes of the rune System all had similar functions. They upgraded the user’s compatibility with a certain weapon, and enhanced the user’s ability to utilize that weapon. My tenth rune, which I had acquired near the end of last world, had allowed me to ‘bond’ with a certain weapon type, and then do a variety of odd things with it, such as seeing out of my weapon, hearing out of it, enhancing the weapon, and generally just improving the ways I could use my chosen weapon.
Since I had still been routinely using {Breath of the Storm} at the time, I had improved my compatibility with umbrellas. Then, after we returned to the Market, I started hoarding piles of consumable items, since I figured we would need it to survive our fight for more lives, and then in this life, I had leaned very hard into my role as a mage and a healer over everything else.
My eleventh rune, as far as I could tell, expanded my talent with umbrellas. Out of sheer curiosity, I made a very low quality umbrella with a carving knife during some of my off time and then tried fighting with it, and I very rapidly realized that I was learning things faster and more efficiently than ever before. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was how Sallia felt when she picked up a weapon - as if the moves were just… blurring together into my muscle memory moments after trying a move. I could learn things faster, retain them better, and repeat them with less thought mere minutes after trying something out.
The other function that my eleventh rune had was that it allowed me to bond with one specific umbrella, which would, in turn, allow me to teleport that umbrella back to my hand, so long as it was within a certain distance of me. I imagined this would be quite useful if I wanted to use my umbrella as a throwing weapon, or my umbrella got knocked out of my hand.
The problem was that this still wasn’t very useful for me.
The problem, of course, was that I had found such little use for weaponry in this world that I hadn’t even bothered to replace {Breath of the Storm} after handing it off to Felix. I suspected this was going to be true in future worlds, too. I was investing so much more time and effort into my magic and support skills that weapon skills would probably never catch up… and if they were never going to catch up, I wasn’t that willing to waste glut penalty or time on them. Thus, the eleventh rune might as well have not existed as far as my strength went.
This made me really hope for some kind of Ability evolution to change the situation. One of my previous ability evolutions had totally changed the function of the first six runes in my rune magic System, so I already knew that some evolutions could warp what runes did and how they worked. I hoped to find another ability evolution that turned all of my other runes into something a bit more mage or support oriented - or perhaps something that leaned further into my more eldritch side. In any case, my rune abilities clearly needed some kind of upgrade to make the later runes relevant to me.
While my growth in runes was somewhat disappointing when it came to results, my healing and buffing abilities had seen a massive upgrade.
The first step towards this massive growth spike was when I hit level 80.
You have leveled up!
Frost Void Mage has advanced from level 77 to level 80!
+12 Free Attribute Points (X4)
+9 Sense (X4)
+9 Mind (X4)
+9 Vitality (X4)
+20 Mana (X4)
Power: you have leveled up a (3-facet) Compound Spark (X4)
Achievement + 1200 (X4)
Naturally, this triggered a new feat selection. Once I saw my new feat, I couldn’t help but let out a triumphant cackle, because I had finally gotten something absolutely terrifying out of this world’s System. Even better, it was something I could take with me back to the Market.
Level 80 Feat Choice (Pick 1)
Strength of the Void
Devours multiple skills in order to create one new, unified skill.
Skills consumed:
Third Mysterious Rune Ability (Spatial Protection)
Born of Winter’s Hold (Second Spark Skill Reward)
Light of Healing (Granted by level 40 Perk)
Frozen Void (Granted by level 70 Perk)
Instead, you will gain a new Skill: Songs of the Void.
Effect:
This Skill can affect up to 10 people at once.
All people affected by this gain a massive stat boost (3.375X boost) to ALL non-mana attributes.
(Market note: This will not impact any essence stat, but will affect all physical and mental stats).
This buff effect costs very little mana or (unknown_mana_type) to maintain, but people influenced by it must not be more than 1 kilometer away from you.
People influenced by this skill gain the ability to perform short bursts of teleportation at the cost of their own mana reserves. They also restrict all spatially related abilities performed by entities they feel genuine hostility to, so long as those entities are within five meters.
(Market Note: the local System’s description implies that only mana can be used to fuel this ability, but this is incorrect. Any of the four essence types can be used by companions or allies to fuel short-burst teleportation, and you may pay any type of essence to maintain the buff granted by this ability).
This Skill will be folded into your third Mysterious rune, replacing its original ability.
Normally, I would not be able to take this back with me to the Market, of course… but Felix’s {Brand of Miria} let me erase my original third rune ability and replace it with the new, enhanced version. Which meant that in all future worlds, I could now grant my friends a full 3-grade buff at almost no essence cost, along with a few minor spatial boosts.
This skill, of course, was completely insane. It was a huge payoff for all of the other skills I had collected and failed to level up during our time in this world. I had been very busy working with my Market abilities during the great migration and the struggles to establish our new colony. I had originally intended to find some time to finally grind up all of these skills once things settled down, since I knew I could take Skills back to the Market with me, but with how desperate things had gotten, I had been forced to rely on my strongest abilities over and over again to keep us alive. Sadly, that meant that the Skills from this world’s local System had fallen to the wayside - because I didn’t have the time to work on them when every moment felt like a crisis. Therefore, I was happy to fold them all into my third rune ability, especially since I could still take this upgrade with me.
After that, naturally, I picked up my fifth Spark. I had already consumed my first three sparks to make my compound spark… so I was now picking up a totally new Spark. Since I had mostly been focusing on souls and healing recently, I ended up going for a healing spark this time.
You have leveled up!
Acolyte of Healing has advanced from level 80 to level 81!
+20 Free Attribute Points
+20 Vitality
+25 Mana
Power: you have leveled up your Fifth Spark
Achievement + 1000
In total, this meant I had gained another 7450 Achievement from these three upgrades, bringing me from 324,724 Achievement to 332,174 Achievement.
Interestingly enough, this Spark only gave me 65 total stats, which was actually FEWER than I had gotten from my compound spark. I had kind of expected that though, since I had already known that compound sparks were worse than basic ones, and I currently had no basic sparks to blend together. As always, I also got a new Skill from the local System when I acquired my new Class.
This one was called {Light of Healing}, and as usual, started at Tier 0. I got the feeling that it was somehow bouncing off of my eldritch side, to enhance my healing abilities and extend them into more soul-related healing - which was a good thing, because I was already doing an awful lot of healing. Unlike my other abilities, I suspected I had a real chance of developing this Skill, since I was already healing people pretty frequently. Over the past few months, injuries had become more and more common as the pressure on our settlement grew.
My friends had also grown notably over the past two months. Our settlement had begun to give warriors some level of individual rewards for each fog bank we killed, and I had traded most of mine with the fog pillar. In exchange, the fog pillar had helped Anise develop a new line of fog spells.
Anise could now create a blanket of fog that concealed us exceptionally well, and she could also replicate the summoning abilities of the fog banks we had been fighting. Thanks to her ability to level up her spells through repeated use and Achievement investment, Anise had actually become a terrifyingly powerful summoner. She was one of the reasons our casualties over the months hadn’t been higher - she was capable of creating a large army of fog monsters to protect the kids anytime a fog monster was nearby. Since the fog monsters lacked any direct offensive means, she was surprisingly good at holding them off long enough for one of the heavy hitters to reinforce whatever area was being attacked.
Felix and the other craftsmen had also been working on finding a way to stick the extinguish-based spells on something other than the kind of wood we had been using for swords so far, with unfortunately little luck. However, Felix had at least gotten a few more of his skills ready for when we returned to the market.
Sallia, of course, had been part of the front line swordsmen who killed fog banks. She had experienced a similar level of growth to me when it came to this world’s local levelling System, and she had also rebuild her runes up to the ninth rune. This time, due to her ability evolution from last world, she wouldn’t lose her runes, either.
However, while things were going great for the four of us on a personal growth level, on a settlement level, things were getting bad. The fog banks had started to inflict more and more casualties on both the children and the defenders, and people were growing more worried and stressed out with every passing day. Over the past two months, we had lost about fifty people. Our original population of around 1,000 people had dropped to about 950. About two thirds of those deaths had come from two unfortunate incidents, where fog banks had managed to sneak past the front line fighters and get at the children before their screams alerted people that they needed to be rescued. However, front line fighters, and even two of the people who were wielding soul-severing swords, had died.
After two months of gradual wear and tear, it was becoming very clear that this couldn’t go on. The night marking our second month into this new, hellish routine, Veritum called everyone to yet another village meeting. As I walked towards the meeting, I felt a mixture of anxiety and relief. Veritum must have called us together because he had some kind of plan. I suspected it would be a desperate one, because if there was an easy solution to our problems, we would have done it already.
But it was also clear that this couldn’t go on. Something needed to change, fast, before we went extinct. This was our final chance to turn the tides before things passed beyond recovery. I just hoped that Veritum had a way to turn the tides.